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>> During Monday's intersquad scrimmage at the Skate Zone in Voorhees that concluded the camp, Schenn had three goals and one assist as his team won, 6-3. Schenn, who played a total of nine games during the last two seasons with the Kings, kept his hat trick on Monday well in perspective.

"Anybody likes to score goals, but at the same time it is July," he said. "It is just a start, and I am trying to prove myself and earn a roster spot this year."

Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren said he was impressed with the physical strength of Schenn.

"He is a bull on the puck," Holmgren said. "He is strong on the puck and makes good plays." <<

Over the weeks, GM Holmgren has virtually said that the 3rd line center spot is Schenn's.

We will be patient with Couturier.

September Camp will be interesting.

`

i think this team is going to see an equal split in time - based on matchup pairings between the 3rd and 4th lines ....

what makes the most sense is keeping talbot at center ... and he isn't a 3rd line center. just like we paid shelley 1.1 million to play 4 min a game, we are going to pay talbot 1.8 million to play 9-11min a game + pk time.

`
If the Stamkos thing breaks open (and we have 630 posts in this Stamkos thread with 18,786 reads), -

- it's ironic that Toronto's trade centerpiece would be Schenn - just as the Flyers trade centerpiece may be Schenn.

Here is today's HockeyBuzz blog:

It Will Take Luke Schenn to get Stamkos

July 13, 2011, 1:44 PM ET

Eklund
HockeyBuzz

Just talked to a source who said it is now widely known that "Should Toronto want a shot at Stamkos it is now known that Schenn would be the centerpiece...a piece that Burke has repeatedly said he would not move."

Now, as I have said before...if a GM can make his team better he will, and there is no doubt Burke would trade Schenn for Stamkos in a second...so what Brian is saying in GM speak is "you will have to come and get Schenn, but I won't be offering him up any time soon."

As I have said before..nothing a GM says is without meaning, and if it's said in public or to the press, it is meant to be heard loud and clear around the NHL.

>> During Monday's intersquad scrimmage at the Skate Zone in Voorhees that concluded the camp, Schenn had three goals and one assist as his team won, 6-3. Schenn, who played a total of nine games during the last two seasons with the Kings, kept his hat trick on Monday well in perspective.

"Anybody likes to score goals, but at the same time it is July," he said. "It is just a start, and I am trying to prove myself and earn a roster spot this year."

Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren said he was impressed with the physical strength of Schenn.

"He is a bull on the puck," Holmgren said. "He is strong on the puck and makes good plays." <<

Over the weeks, GM Holmgren has virtually said that the 3rd line center spot is Schenn's.

We will be patient with Couturier.

September Camp will be interesting.

`

no not at all im saying schenn is the primary prospect and they want to be 100% sure that hes ready, i dont want that to happen but when you are forced off the puck along the boards....you shouldnt exactly be proud especially when it happens more then once, he scored a hat trick against a bunch of low end prospects to say the least.

i hope he makes it, had wished the flyers had gotten him when he was drafter, i think hes guna be a force to reckon with for at least a decade and a half, but if you are playing third line center he needs to be solid all around, once against i hope he gets it, let go flyboys!

no not at all im saying schenn is the primary prospect and they want to be 100% sure that hes ready, i dont want that to happen but when you are forced off the puck along the boards....you shouldnt exactly be proud especially when it happens more then once, he scored a hat trick against a bunch of low end prospects to say the least.

i hope he makes it, had wished the flyers had gotten him when he was drafter, i think hes guna be a force to reckon with for at least a decade and a half, but if you are playing third line center he needs to be solid all around, once against i hope he gets it, let go flyboys!

you're thinking prototypical, shutdown line, 3rd line center. that's not the case with the Flyers. they don't have one specific line like that. they're balanced.

schenn plays a 2 way game. like any 20 year old, he's going to need to bulk up. he's 20, not 25.

Dale Tallon stood on the draft floor in Minnesota two weeks ago and talked about being a fan of the game. He talked about how much he loves offense and players who can make great plays. Then the Florida Panthers GM went out and either signed or traded for Scottie Upshall, Kris Versteeg, Tomas Fleischmann, Tomas Kopecky, Sean Bergenheim, Marcel Goc and Matt Bradley in an effort to get up to the payroll floor of $48.3 million.

He also traded for Brian Campbell and signed Ed Jovanovski and shored up his goaltending by signing well-travelled veteran Jose Theodore, presumably to be his No. 1 man.

All the while, the best free agent in this yearís class sat idly by without being signed. Heís the youngest, most dynamic goal-scorer in the league today and possesses a one-timer from the circle that rivals those of Mike Bossy and Brett Hull. All Tallon, or any other GM in the league, had to do was sign Steven Stamkos to an offer sheet.

(Cue the crickets.)

By all accounts, there have been no serious overtures made to Stamkos in the 11 days since he has become a restricted free agent. The Philadelphia Flyers spoke briefly with Stamkos prior to blowing up their roster, but announced shortly after they would not be signing Stamkos to an offer sheet. (An odd bit of news to actually announce, but hey, the Flyers like to march to the beat of their own drummer.)

The Toronto Maple Leafs are screaming out for young offensive talent and had a ton of cap room July 1, but chose to either sign or trade for Tim Connolly, Matthew Lombardi, John-Michael Liles, Cody Franson and Philippe Dupuis rather than extend an offer sheet to a budding superstar who grew up in their own backyard. Even the New York Rangers, who uncharacteristically had all sorts of cap room, decided to invest their future in a 31-year-old with a history of concussion problems when they inked Brad Richards to a nine-year deal worth $60 million, with $24 million of that salary coming in the first two years of the deal. Stamkos, meanwhile, is 10 years younger than Richards and outscored him by 17 goals and 14 points last season.

The New York Islanders still need to spend more than $10 million just to get up to the floor, but no offer sheet for Stamkos. Instead, Stamkos will almost certainly re-sign with the Lightning at some point this summer on a five-year deal worth about $37 million.

According to the collective bargaining agreement, any team with enough cap room and a first round pick in each of the next four entry drafts could sign Stamkos to an offer sheet the Tampa Bay Lightning would have the right to match. The offer could have been for any number of years and could have accounted for as much as $12.86 million per season, which is 20 percent of the $64.3 million team salary cap for next season.

Why has nobody even come close to making that bold move for a player who has the potential to be the most dangerous goal-scorer in the NHL for the next decade? Some will have you believe there is a massive conspiracy of collusion at work here, that GMs around the league have a Ďnudge-nudge, wink-winkí agreement they wonít raid each otherís rosters by poaching their best young players.

That is a very serious charge and Iím certainly not about to make it here, largely because I donít believe it to be true. These are the same GMs who will take elements of a CBA that is supposed to help small market teams and find loopholes in it to gain a competitive advantage. I believe that if one of those GMs truly thought signing Stamkos to an offer sheet would make his team a Stanley Cup contender in the long run, he would have done it by now.

But it is curious that nobody has done it, isnít it? After all, at the very least, the Panthers could have forced the Lightning to match the offer, which would have placed them firmly in salary cap hell and would have forced them to make moves to their roster that might have weakened them. That was the strategy the San Jose Sharks employed last summer when they signed Niklas Hjalmarsson to an offer sheet, then capitalized on the Chicago Blackhawks cap problems to sign goalie Antti Niemi.

Itís impossible to prove thereís collusion because the way the system is constructed for restricted free agents gives teams far too much ammunition in their argument. The biggest one is the team that falls victim to the offer sheet has the right to match. Which means thereís a good chance any team signing a player to an offer sheet will miss out on him and do nothing more than drive up the cost of doing business for everyone.

Thereís also the matter that the team has seven days to make its decision and thatís an enormous factor on July 1. The Rangers, for example, could easily argue that if they had signed Stamkos to an offer sheet, the uncertainty of the situation would have caused them to miss out on Richards and if Tampa had matched, they would have missed out on both players.

Any team that would have signed Stamkos to an offer sheet July 1 would have likely had to wait until July 8 for the situation to be resolved and by then the crop of unrestricted free agents would have been picked clean.

And finally, Tallon could argue his team is better off spreading $12 million-plus on his combination of forwards or on Campbell and Jovanovski on defense than devoting it all to one player. After all, Upshall, Versteeg, Kopecky and Bergenheim accounted for 72 goals last season and cost the Panthers $12.33 million in salary cap space, which is $500,000 less than the maximum offer they could have made to Stamkos.

So donít blame the GMs for the fact Stamkos hasnít been signed nearly two weeks after free agency opened. In this case, the system is designed to help teams keep their young players and in many ways, it works. Sure, the player often loses out in the end, but you always have to remember these are entry-level players who, like Stamkos, werenít even in the NHL when the last CBA was approved by the players. It has always been easy for established players to throw them under the bus.

Ken Campbell, author of the book Habs Heroes, is a senior writer for The Hockey News and a regular contributor to THN.com with his column.

Im kind of excited for this...I want to see what these kids are made of...Also, something to note...Winnipeg basically signed every RFA yesterday except for Bogosian...its becoming something to watch at this point with Stamkos not signed...I think we shift to young defensive help at this point.